Sania Mirza reaches the \ufb01nal of
the Lexington Challenger,
signalling a good start to the
long hard court season ahead

column \u2018First
Innings\u2019, Liffy
Thomas pro\ufb01les
start-ups that
have faced the
heat due to
recession and
have found
ways to reinvent

Manoj from Amazon Development Centre
India and Uma of Nokia India bagged the
Mr. Ascendas and Ms. Ascendas titles
respectively at the Ascendas Talent Hunt
held recently.
The three-day event held in association with
Hello 106.4 FM at the International Tech
Park Chennai, saw about 40 IT companies
coming together for three days of fun and
extravaganza. The talent hunt started with
contests in junk art and photography. R.
Ramesh of Lionbridge Technologies won
\ufb01rst prize for creating a robot out of plastic
bottles. Shanmugam of Amazon
Development Centre, India, bagged the \ufb01rst
prize for his photograph \u2018Candid Moments
with Colleagues\u2019.
The judges for the fashion show were ace
fashion designer Rehane, fashion stylist
Priya Rajesh, renowned theatre personality
Varalakshmi Sarathkumar and Lee Fu Nyap,
Senior Vice President, Ascendas India
Operations. Nine teams participated in the
show and Amazon Gangsters, the team
from Amazon Development Centre, India,
bagged the \ufb01rst prize.
The events culminated with a dance
competition. The best dancers were
adjudged by John Britto of John Britto
Dance Studio and Satishkumar V.R., Vice
President - Ascendas Chennai Operations.
Cobra Legal Solutions emerged victorious in
the folk dance category and Sony
Imageworks bagged the \ufb01rst place in
western dance.\u25a0

hennai will play host to the NASSCOM HR Summit 2009 on July 28 and 29 at hotel Le

Royal Meridien. The sum- mit holds signi\ufb01cance as 2008 has been a turbulent year, with the economic slowdown and issues around handling workforce mak- ing the role of HR more challeng- ing. This year the theme is \u2018Balancing the Board: Cost and Competencies\u2019.

The two-day event will be at- tended by industry bigwigs like Som Mittal, president NASSCOM; Kris Gopalakrishnan, CEO and MD, Infosys Technologies; Sanjay JOG, Group HR Head, Future Group; Ian Gore, HR Head, South Asia, CITI; and Suresh C. Senapa- ty, Executive Director and CFO, Wipro, to name a few.

Top industry heads will be sharing insights on how the eco- nomic crisis has reshaped the in- dustry,

dif\ufb01cult decisions that leaders had to take and how they were handled, ex-

pectation from HR heads and im- portance of employer branding, to name a few.

Speakers Anand Pillai, senior vice-president, HCL Technolo- gies; Karthik N. Sarma, Chief Peo- ple Of\ufb01cer, WNS Global Services; and Prabir Jha, Senior Vice-Presi- dent and Global Chief, HR, Dr. Reddy\u2019s Laboratories Limited, will discuss how to assess em- ployees\u2019 needs and their percep- tion of the company, what engagement strategies can be worked out for employees on the bench and the top \ufb01ve drivers that keep employees engaged.

for creating a global workforce\u2019; \u2018Looking into the future: Top \ufb01ve HR practices to follow\u2019; \u2018Manag- ing Variable Pay: Approach and implementation case studies\u2019 are some of the other topics for dis- cussion. The valedictory will be presented by Subroto Bagchi of MindTree on \u2018Doing the right thing: Making ethics a way of life\u2019.

The summit can be attended by CEOs, senior HR professionals and training and industry-acade- mia alliance heads.

Come join Courtyard by Marriott as they celebrate their
third anniversary. \u2018A Spa A Stay\u2019 package is inclusive of a
room, breakfast, spa treatment and a meal at Paprika. For
further information and reservations call 66764000.

aking risk is part of any business, but Kalyaan and his group of six Engi- neering

classmates might not have realised that their debut venture failing would make them go different ways.

It was at a time when the BPO industry was on an ex- pansion mode. The friends ran their of\ufb01ce from a residen- tial space to develop a soft- ware for HR \ufb01rms, where it would track and tackle re- sumes.

\u201cWe ran the start-up for a year and got three to four cli- ents, but that was the end of the venture,\u201d recalls G. Ka- lyaan Kumar, one of the foun- ders. \u201cWe realised that the intelligent tracking system was ahead of the times and the market was not ready for it.\u201dMatching the growing num-

ber of start-ups is an equally alarming number of compa- nies that are shutting down.

A research by the U.S. Bu- reau of Labor Statistics shows that nearly six in 10 businesses shut down within the \ufb01rst four years of operation. There are many reasons why a business fails \u2013 poor business plan, un- favourable market conditions, too much leverage, picking a niche that is small, breakup of the founding team, having a

single founder and poor loca- tion. Whatever the hiccups, some \ufb02ow with the tide to see a slow growth while some ex- plore a different market to pursue their entrepreneurial goals.

(name changed) recalls his journey from launching a start-up in the U.S. to closing it down af- ter the dotcom bubble burst to now opening his second ven- ture, which is two years old in Chennai. The founding team comprising an Indian-Ameri- can, a German and two Indi- ans (both from IT \ufb01eld) were left mid-sea after the dotcom crashed without any proper communication. The \u201chori- zontal portal\u201d with a pan-In-

\u201cOur repeated attempts to engage the VC team was fruit- less as the entire management was changed out of a typical witch-hunting process and the new ones didn\u2019t care. We had a successful consulting and development business that had helped us sustain till the funding and we were, as part of the term sheet, asked to completely shut down all our business efforts and solely focus on the project,\u201d says Ku- mar.

To add to the crisis was the 9/11 incident, as most of their business came from the U.S. \u201cWe were not alone in our suf-

fering. Around 400 dotcoms crashed, thanks to the short- sighted policies of VCs. Our overseas

were dumb-founded at the cavalier treatment meted to very pro- ven IT professionals with solid background and international recognition.\u201d Any failure is painful and if it results in the shutting of the business it can even be a very demeaning experience.

example, launched his second venture in the real estate sector in Chennai, with the \ufb01nancial

backing of his father, in three months after his venture with friends had to be shut down.

\u201cIt is a real thrill to be in- dependent. For me it was like running 1,000 kms at a stretch,\u201d says Kalyaan.

His second venture, Hand- sel, is \ufb01ve years old and last year Kalyaan started his third venture, Quads IT Solutions, with two business partners. \u201cThe difference between the \ufb01rst and third is that the for- mer was with my close friends, while the latter I met through common friends. Everything is entrepreneurship has been a stepping stone. You need to keep on learning and chang- ing,\u201d says Kalyaan, who plans to invest in more companies.

The economic slowdown is another major challenge faced by a large number of \ufb01rst-gen- eration entrepreneurs. Hyde- rabad-based

start-up OrderMonger, which closed its operation in October 2008, writes in its blog, \u201cThis deci- sion has been taken predomi- nantly due to non-viability of the business while maintain- ing the high service standards we intend to provide... We sin- cerely appreciate the support and feel good that we were able to make a difference, so

Similarly, the foun- ders of BookEasy, a Pune-based

online movie ticketing service that shut its oper- ations, are now focus- ing on Lipikaar, a language translitera- tion. Similar go the sto-

Naresh sums up lessons one must learn from their ven- tures: Never be naive and trust a VC or anyone, as when the sky falls you stand alone; have a plan B; create alternate reve- nue streams or be very clear and get adequate funding and make sure it is in the bank and not on paper agreements; have at least six months cash reserve; think big and start with a small, manageable, de- monstrable step; never lose faith and keep envisioning your customer.\u25a0

(First Innings is a weekly
column that celebrates the spirit
of entrepreneurship)

Failures are
common in
any business
but it
is important
to learn lessons
from a closure.
Stories of

has been a stepping
stone. You need to
keep on learning
and changing